Dieter Strehl from Piatnik chats about Pacal's Rocket, a family game based on the notion that Mayan civlization was built by alien technology. Move your starship around the city in order to place energy stones in a pattern to build pyramids and score.

Matthias Nagy is the creative force behind the Board Game Advent Calendar. This calendar is a big box with 24 doors. Behind each door is an original mini-expansion for a popular board or card game. 21 different publishers contributed to this ambitious project, including Colt Express, the winner of the Spiel des Jahres (Germany's Game of the Year). Matthias discusses how he was able to make his vision for the calendar a reality in less than one year.

Portuguese designers Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade chat about the inspiration, research and development behind Nippon, a game that depicts the rapid industrialization of Japan in the late 19th century.

Minwoo An from Korean board game publisher Deinko chats about the growth of gaming in Korea from a purely educational activity for children to the spread of game cafes as a way to spend time with friends.

We also discuss two new titles from Deinko: Chronicler and Double Mission: Beyond the Object.

Chronicler is a 20 minute civilization building card game with two different modes of play.

Double Mission is a dice based heist game where players compete to steal precious items to gain fame and fortune.

Japon Brand offers many different games from Japanese designers but is not a traditional publisher in the European or American sense of the word. It is an alliance of many small publishers brought together by practical necessity - pooling their resources in order to bring more games to market

We chat with the founder of Japon Brand, Takerube Nobuaki, noted game designer Seiji Kanai and translator Simon Lundstrom about Hanafuda (Flower Cards), a classic Japanese card game. Hanafuda has a fascinating history including Portuguese missionaries, gambling and the founding of Nintendo.

We also discuss the influence of traditional board and card games like Hanafuda and Shogi or Go on modern game designers and players in Japan.

Finally, we conclude with a chat about the recent micro-game craze, inspired in part by the global success of Seiji's game Love Letter.